Happenstance
by one.twilight.sun
Summary: For the Doctor, there's no such thing as coincidence.


**Author's Note: I keep procrastinating on my NaNo novel. Hence this really long one-shot. It's been awhile since I've written something this long in one go (that tells you how I'm doing on NaNo :/ ).**

**Happenstance**

Around the universe he goes, alone except for his lovely and trusty ship ("Sexy" as he knows her). One hundred years and then to Lake Silencio. One hundred years and then he's supposed to die. Die as in dead, dead-dead; regeneration stopped mid cycle and the one to kill him? Well, he thinks he's always known. Considering her upbringing.

But that's a tomorrow that's still a hundred and some odd years away! He's got today, he sings off-key under his breath—_today,__today,__today_—as he twirls around the console, pulling levers and pushing buttons. Perhaps he'd go visit the Gaeways with their upside down world and cities in the sky or dance under the light of Shum's two moons or even vacation on the diamond planet (on second thought, scratch that) or even—

His inner monologue is disturbed with the ringing of the cloister bells. The Doctor's hearts stop for .28 seconds as the clanging reaches the inner ear drums and translates through to his brain. The TARDIS swerves off course and he grabs wildly for the monitor as it swings past him. Hanging onto part of the console with his leg, he tries to read the frantic symbols as they scatter themselves across the screen.

"Oh no! No! No! No!"

She's been thrown out of the vortex somehow and they're tumbling head over heels to a vaguely recognizable planet in an unknown time. The familiarity of it all strikes the Doctor and all of a sudden he's afraid.

*.*

He'd pick himself up off the TARDIS floor once she'd landed, rather roughly, and settled himself on the steps leading to the upper corridor. With his hands clasped in front of him, a restraining motion that he isn't admitting to, he stares at the doors that lead outside. He's not an idiot. He knows where she's landed and no way is he stepping foot outside those doors.

Even if she's nudging him. Even if she's filling his mind with questions of where on the timeline is he, what do they do grounded as they are, does he work at Torchwood?

Are they still together? He silently adds without volition.

The rebel thought galvanizes him into action. He shouldn't be here.! Jumping up, he leaps over to the console, desperately entering in coordinates and commands to get the damn ship to _move_. But she refuses to even acknowledge a single action he's doing except for a slight hiccup that he's trying not to think of as a burp because she'd find it rude.

Sighing because he knows that he's defeated himself before he even refused to go, he turns away from the console and resolutely marches to the door. With one other deep breath, a straightening of the (cool) bowtie, he steps out into the bright parallel London day.

*.*

It's a summer Sunday with plenty of people out and about enjoying the temperate weather, shopping for loved ones (and a bit for themselves) and having a luncheon with some friends. Humanity. He beams as he sits in a quiet corner of a café, how mundane they can be sometimes.

Maybe he's been slightly pushed out of the TARDIS but that doesn't mean that he isn't his own man, he's not going to go see _them_ just yet just because she obviously wants him to. They've probably got their own lives (together) and he'd be a rather awkward third wheel, not that he's planning on staying long.

He's sure the old girl has a purpose to this visit, just as she'd had the last time she'd brought him to a place where _she__'__d_ be there. And once he'd fulfilled whatever said purpose was, they'd be on their merry way. But until he's ready—he wants to, he's content to have a hot cuppa without tearing open some wounds that's best left scarred over.

As he contemplates the tea leaves at the bottom of his cup (why didn't he ever take up tea leave reading? He'd probably have been a hit predicting futures), he doesn't realize that he's gained a miniature audience in the meantime.

He finally senses the attention and stops sonicking the cup long enough to glance at them from the corner of his eye. Two children, a tow-headed boy and a brunette pig-tailed girl, stand just outside the token iron railing that surrounds the outdoor patio. They're holding hands and watching him with wide-eyed innocence, the little girl has her thumb in her mouth. The boy couldn't be above seven years old with his sister no more than five.

Perhaps he shouldn't have taken out the sonic to investigate what his tea reading would be.

The silent staring is getting to him a little and he resists the urge to turn the sonic screwdriver on the children, just in case they're alien and unfriendly. He doesn't think so, but it's better to be on the safe side. (When had he started thinking like that? He _must_ be getting old.)

Before it gets to that point however, the girl removes her thumb from her mouth with a loud wet popping sound and says one word that captures his full attention:

"Scwewdwivuh."

*.*

Pausing at the edge of a park, he takes a moment to catch his breath. Running doesn't do what it used to for him. It's not like he's out of shape; it was just that these kids were half-Hermes. He'd also belatedly realized that a grown man chasing two little children screaming their heads off (in maniacal glee, mind you) probably wasn't the best thing to be doing in public streets.

He'd asked her what she'd said, thinking that maybe in his old age he'd heard her wrong, but she'd simply laughed and run screaming away with her brother. He'd given chase because it really was the only thing he could've done. Because it was evident that these kids were _their_ kids. It was in the little girl's wide smile, in the boy's tousled blonde hair and it both broke his hearts and swelled them to bursting (thank god he had two).

He sees them slow as they approach a picnic table some ways in the park and his breath is stolen away once more (respiratory bypass or no) because it's _her_. And his feet are moving again of their own accord, as they always seem to when she's around, being pulled towards a human magnet.

The children are babbling excitedly to their mother who's bending down to hear their story with a soft smile on her face, one that he's never seen but it's instantly labeled and filed away as "Motherly" to join its sisters: "kind", "bittersweet", "exhilarated" and "for him".

He knows when they've reached the "scwewdwivuh" part because her mouth drops open in surprise and her eyes get a far away look and the children are pointing in his direction, both in proof (_See Mummy? See?_) and in confusion because he's got something that they thought only Daddy had.

She straightens and tucks her hair (still blonde) behind her ear before she looks in his direction. He's only a few meters away at this point and he's struck by the beauty of her. It's been at least ten years for her and if he'd thought she'd been gorgeous before, it was nothing compared to how she looked now. There was that look about her, that aura of belonging that she had, surrounded by her children.

He can't help the smile that comes to his face as he opens his arms to her, an action as automatic as breathing with her. "Rose Tyler!" He loved loved loved how that name sounded off his tongue. He wanted to say it again but felt it would be a bit much in this meeting of two old friends (more than friends?). And besides, she was already moving to meet him halfway.

Some everyday greeting is on the tip of his tongue when the slap nearly swings his head around. _That_ was unexpected. The shock of it gives him little time to adjust before her voice cuts through the haze. "It's Rose Noble, Doctor.," the syllables are sharp but he still can't get too upset about it because they've got Rose's sweet voice wrapped around them. Besides, he did deserve that slap.

"You know you deserved that," she echoes his thoughts. Scary, that. It'd been a long while since he'd been around Rose Tyler—er, Noble and he'd forgotten how well she knew him.

He smiles a crooked smile, slightly self-deprecating but still not quite bitter because he's here with Rose and her _children_, and it's just so good to see her. After a moment, the hurt-anger leaves her hazel eyes and they warm in the welcome he shouldn't really be getting and she puts her arms around him and hugs him hard. He returns it just as tight, pulling her petite frame up off the ground.

She smells the same except more somehow, the lavender of her favorite lotion underscores the tang of this universe, the scent of baked cookies, the residual fragrance of _him_, the one left behind and family. She smells like a family and it hooks him, this heady aroma that he's lacked for more years than he cares to admit.

Two little bodies crash on either side of him, adding to the embrace and his hearts do burst at this point and he doesn't understand why he isn't regenerating. Rose pulls away at the hug attack and laughs at her kids.. "Blade! Gem! Get off the Doctor! You haven't even been properly introduced and you're hangin' all over him." But there's no actual scolding in her tone.

The children back away reluctantly and hang onto each others' hands tight as they stare up and up at the tall Doctor, who isn't _their_Doctor but still very important to Mummy. The Doctor is blinking rapidly because something got caught in his eye in all this hubbub and he's trying to smile at them with the goofy smile that he's perfected these past hundred years. The smile that said "I'm okay, really" when he's actually not. But this time it's because he's more than okay.

She smiles back at him, pink tongue and all ("ecstatic") and gets on her tip-toes to give him a smacking kiss on the lips. It's that moment that he knows that she's no longer in love with him. Oh, she loves him all right, but isn't _in_ love any longer. She's put together a new life with the other Doctor, who _was_ him but isn't really. Not anymore.

He meets her eyes and sees that there's understanding there (when has there not been?) and he realizes that he's okay with it. He loves her and she'll always hold a special place in his hearts but he too is a different man.

"Rose?" The question breaks the silence that isn't awkward and the Doctor's attention goes to the man coming up behind Rose. Would you look at that? There's a little gray in that (still great) hair but otherwise he looks the same since that day on the beach—he tries not to cringe—though it is a bit strange seeing him in jeans and a plain shirt. Quickly he glances down. Still got the trainers.

The other Doctor has yet to notice his presence, his eyes focused on Rose (good, some things didn't change). She'd turned at his voice to greet him and the younger Doctor bends to kiss her, one hand sliding into the nape of her hair with complete familiarity. The kids make sounds of disgust and move away to play with toys set up on the picnic table.

She pulls away and smiles at the younger Doctor ("for him" this time and it does hurt a little bit). She points at the Doctor from the home universe standing next to them, the one that their children are still staring at, the one who finally notices the ring on her hand, the solitary diamond glinting in the sunlight.

The husband looks up and is taken aback. It was interesting, this, looking at a previous regeneration's face and a Time Lord-human metacrisis to boot.

"Doctor," the other nods to him before his face darkens and he steps threateningly towards him, arm moving back.

"Oh no! Doctor, really, it's okay!" Rose steps in between them, smiling a bit mischievously at her husband. "I've already slapped him. NO need to give him another." The anger that the Doctor remembers so well in that regeneration simmers down behind brown eyes.

A look passes between husband and wife and the younger Doctor's shoulders fully relax. He turns back to the Doctor. "Sorry about that. It's just...with the way things ended last...we kind of promised ourselves we'd give you a good smacking."

The Doctor shrugs, understanding the feeling and finding it a little funny that a part-Time Lord would be thinking so barbaric but perhaps it's that bit of Donna at work in him.

"But now that that's dispensed with; come here, you!" Rose's Doctor reaches out for him in a one-armed man-hug that surprises the Doctor so that he barely has time to respond before the man pulls back.

"You're—you're really not mad at me?" The guilt of that day has weighed down on him all these years. It'd been a cowardly move. "For the best" but still cowardly and it'd taken him some time to admit to that .

The couple looks at each other and smile. Rose speaks for the both of them. "No, we're not mad at you. We _were_but not anymore. We've built a good life here, Doctor." She waves her arm around to include the two little ones at the picnic table. "A wonderfully fantastic life and how can we be angry about that?"

And just like that, the crushing weight of guilt that had been Rose-shaped disappears and he feels almost like a new man, almost like a regeneration high. He laughs because that's the only thing he _can_ do and he hugs Rose and her husband.

*.*

He stays with this family of Nobles: Rose and John, Blade and Gem, sitting at the picnic table eating the barbecue John puts together and they talk and laugh and learn from each other. The kids have been raised on tales of the Doctor and accept him readily. They've got their own Doctor who's raised and loved them they naturally assume having two must be even better.

When the sun is ready to set and the park has emptied of all the others that had come out to play, the Doctor feels his TARDIS key heat up in his pocket. He takes it out and stares at it, surprised at the lack of enthusiasm he has now at leaving.

"You gotta go." He looks up and meets Rose's eyes. "Whatever it is you're about to face, Doctor, know that you have people who love you, many people out there and, most of all, a family that cares for you."

He's overcome with emotion as he hugs her one last time, holding her for a moment to stamp her feel and her smell in his mind. As he lets go, she's blinking back tears and turns to John who' s appeared at her side, knowing she would need him.

John holds out a hand and shakes the Doctor's warmly. There are no words needed for two men who had been one and the same. John knows what it's like to run away from the inevitable but also knows that what seems to always be doesn't always have to end up the way one thinks.

The Doctor squats down to the children's level and his throat constricts a little. This perhaps was the best and worst part of this visit: knowing that Rose and a part of himself in a way would continue in this different universe while at the same time knowing he was looking at children that could have been his had he made different choices.

The little mopheads both had that Rose-understanding in their eyes and they wrapped their arms around him at the same time, two little human hearts thrumming against him. "Bye, Uncle Doctor," Blade says as he wipes a sniffly nose with the back of his hand. Little Gem doesn't do more than look up at him with sparkling hazel eyes. He smiles his most reassuring smile before straightening and laying his hands on their heads, trying to get himself to back away.

Finally, he's able to pull away and the children move to either side of their parents. With the last of the sun glinting through the trees and haloing them, the picture is forever seared into his hearts. He starts walking backwards, feeling sadness yet a satisfaction that he's boxing away to look at a little later. As he reaches the sidewalk, the Doctor brings himself to turn around with one last wave and makes the rest of the way back to the TARDIS, contemplating the gift she'd given him and enjoying the memories he's made today.

The universes have become just that much more dear to him and, perhaps, worth fighting for once more.


End file.
